Commentaria in Judices
a tyrant, that all his seventy brothers were seeking the kingdom, and that there would be continual strife among them over the kingdom, so that they might assign it to himself alone. For the sons of the Judges did not succeed their parents in the principate, but when one died, another from another family and tribe was chosen by God or by the people. And even if one of Gedeon’s sons had succeeded him, there would have been only one, namely the firstborn, not seventy. Hence it is clear that Abimelech feigns and lies in this, so that the kingdom may be conferred on himself alone.
4. AND THEY GAVE HIM SEVENTY WEIGHTS OF SILVER OUT OF THE TEMPLE OF BAALBERITH.—that with it he might enlist soldiers, by whom he might invade and seize the kingdom of Israel. The Hebrew does not have “weights,” but only seventy of silver, that is, shekels, say Vatablus, Arias and others. But seventy shekels of silver are seventy Brabant florins, each of which contains four Roman julios or four Spanish reals, with which he could scarcely have enlisted one or two soldiers. Wherefore Arias asserts from the Rabbis that by the name of silver pieces is understood in the Pentateuch the shekel, in the Prophets (such as this book of Judges is among the Hebrews) pounds, in the Hagiographa talents. Although this is not true everywhere, yet it may suit this place. For a pound of silver contains 24 shekels or Brabant florins; wherefore seventy pounds of silver make 1680 shekels or Brabant florins, that is 560 French crowns, with which in that age more soldiers could be enlisted, at least to begin a war. Others understand minas, and a mina contained 60 shekels, Ezech. xlv, 12; wherefore seventy minas contain 4200 shekels. Others understand talents; now the Hebrew talent contained three thousand shekels, that is 4500 ounces, but the Attic talent 1500 shekels, that is 750 ounces; wherefore seventy talents make an enormous sum of silver. Our translator renders it “weights” (pondo), a word which properly signifies a pound, although pondo is sometimes the same as weight, whether of shekels, or ounces, or of any other thing measured by weight.
OUT OF THE TEMPLE OF BAALBERITH,—that is, of Baal, who presided over berith, that is, the covenant, such as the Sichemites had now entered into with Abimelech. For so the Romans, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus testifies, book IV, worshipped the god Pistius and Fidius, as guardian and avenger of faith and covenants, and Jupiter holding the thunderbolt in his hand, that he might hurl it against those who violated faith and covenant; and Jupiter the Stone: for those making a covenant sanctioned it by sacrificing a pig, saying: “If I break faith, may Jupiter strike me, as I strike and sacrifice this pig with a stone.”
So Livy, book I. See how the tyrant Sichemites begin their tyrannical rule with crime and sacrilege. For they plunder the treasury of their god, to give it to their tyrant. Soon to sacrilege they add parricide. Hence it follows:
WHO HIRED TO HIMSELF MEN THAT WERE NEEDY AND WANDERING.—The Hebrew: empty and light; Arias: lost and wandering; Pagninus: empty-headed and unstable; Lyranus: stiff-necked; the Chaldee: empty and libertines; the Septuagint: empty and foolish.
5. AND HE SLEW HIS BRETHREN, THE SONS OF JEROBAAL (Gedeon), SEVENTY MEN, UPON ONE STONE.—There were precisely only 69; for Joatham, the seventieth, had escaped; indeed only 68, if you count Abimelech among the seventy sons of Gedeon. But Scripture in its manner assigns a round and perfect number, even if something is lacking or in excess; for it reckons by tens, hundreds and thousands. So Serarius and others.
UPON ONE STONE.—Arias thinks this stone was an altar, dedicated by the tyrant Abimelech to his idol Baalberith, and erected in the same place where Gedeon his father had before destroyed the altar of Baal, chap. vi, and was therefore called Jerobaal; as if he himself wished to avenge the injury done by his father to the god Baal; and therefore, to repair this injury, he slew in the same place, and as it were immolated, the seventy sons of Gedeon, his brothers. Hence also the Sichemites, as though their Baal had been restored to them, seem to have counted out to him a weight of silver for each head of the slain brothers, namely 70 weights for the seventy sons of Gedeon slain by him.
With like barbarity and parricide Phraates, son of Orodes king of the Parthians by a concubine, killed his aged father and thirty brothers in order to reign, as Justin testifies, book XLII; who also, book X, relates that Ochus king of the Persians put to death eighty brothers; so Amurath, Selim, Bajazet and other Emperors of the Turks kill their brothers, lest they be deprived of the empire by them. Within the memory of our fathers Muleasses, king of Tunis, driven from his kingdom by his own son named Amida, and blinded with a red-hot iron, fled to Charles the Fifth, and this by the just judgment of God, because Muleasses himself had previously slaughtered some of his eighteen brothers and blinded others. Behold whither the blind and raging lust of domination drives men.
Hence it is clear that Abimelech was not truly Judge and Prince of Israel, being chosen neither by God nor by the people, but by a few Sichemite citizens of his own, and forced in by violence; he was a tyrant. Hence we do not read that either the tribe of Juda or the rest accepted him. Hence also he reigned almost only in Sichem.
6. AND (the Sichemites) MADE ABIMELECH KING, BY THE OAK THAT STOOD IN SICHEM.—Andreas Masius on Josue, last chapter, verse 26, and Serarius here suppose, and probably conjecture, that this oak is Elonmoreh, where Abraham, coming from Chaldea into Chanaan, first erected an altar to God, Gen. xii, 6, and under which Jacob buried the idols of his house, Gen. xxxv, 4, and that it is therefore here called ela mutsab, that is, the standing oak, where the Patriarchs were accustomed at a fixed time to call upon God. This oak, then, was ancient. Preserved by the religion of the fathers for many years, namely five hundred years: for so many had passed from Abraham to Abimelech. But, as I said on Josue last chapter, verse 26, this matter is uncertain, and exceeds the common age of oaks (which commonly live to three hundred years).
Now this oak is called mutsab, that is, of the station, as the Septuagint render it, because the Sichemites were accustomed to meet at it, and to hold their stations and assemblies there.
THE HOUSE OF MELLO.—This city Mello is different from the chasm Mello which was between Sion and Jerusalem. For this was a city situated near Sichem, and subject to it as a colony or municipality of it.
7. WHICH WHEN THEY TOLD TO JOATHAM (who was the youngest son of Gedeon, and had escaped the slaughter of his brothers), HE WENT AND STOOD ON THE TOP OF MOUNT GARIZIM (which overhangs the city of Sichem), AND LIFTING UP HIS VOICE, CRIED OUT, AND SAID: HEAR ME, YE MEN OF SICHEM, SO MAY GOD HEAR YOU,—as if to say: I adjure you, O Sichemites, by God, to hear me. Or, as if to say: Hear me speaking what is right and just, that God also may hear you. Cajetan takes it the opposite way. These words, he says, are an imprecation of divine vengeance on the wicked Sichemites, as if to say: I desire and call down upon you that God, the just judge and avenger of crimes, may attend to your iniquity, and hear and see it, and punish and avenge it.
8. THE TREES WENT TO ANOINT A KING OVER THEM; AND THEY SAID TO THE OLIVE TREE: REIGN OVER US, etc.—This is the first, most elegant, and of all the rest the most ancient apologue. For Gedeon and Joatham preceded Phaedrus, Anianus, Aesop and the other writers of fables and apologues by many centuries. On the origin, elegance, use, etc., of apologues I have said much on Ecclesiasticus.
Now, to explain this whole apologue briefly and set it before the eyes, it is to be noted first that it is introduced here by Joatham to show the Sichemites how unjustly and impiously they acted in raising the tyrant Abimelech to be king, after his seventy brothers had been slain, and that they themselves are worthy that, having set over themselves as leader a kinsman who was a parricide, they should likewise feel him as a parricide. Hence he not only calls down curses on them, but also from the mouth of God denounces vengeance on such men.